Far From Heaven
by frozen-delight
Summary: She didn't know that she would never eat again, never shower again and be stuck in the same stupid pair of jeans forever. [The life story of Hannah's vessel. Spoilers up to and including 10x07 "Girls Girls Girls". Caroline!POV]


A/N: I was sorely tempted to have Crowley sext Dean on his dating app, but then I decided to do something else instead. Mostly because I am a big fan of _bertee_'s magnificent story _The Life and Times of Jimmy Novak_ and because I also happen to be rather fond of _Sweet Home Alabama_.

Apologies for all mistakes and all the disagreeableness that comes along with vessel!fic.

* * *

><p><strong>Far From Heaven<strong>

Caroline's first memory is of standing in the kitchen, listening.

There's a distant, but unmistakable whirring which fills her ears. Like the quick flapping of wings, but different to all the birds she's ever encountered at the park. She strains her ears and listens.

"Honey, what are you doing? You're not wearing any – your feet are getting cold," her mother interrupts her in a worried voice and scoops her up in her arms.

"I can hear something, Mommy," Caroline says. "The buzzing. It's talking to me."

"It's just the fridge, sweetie," her mother says and carries her back to bed.

_oo0oo_

When she's six, she meets a boy named Jimmy.

They're playing outside when the sky suddenly darkens and a flash of lightning hits the sand, not far from where they're standing. They cry out in fright, and then, clutching each other's hands, they're running to the spot where the lightning struck – something gleams in the sand, beckoning at them. When they get there, they discover a strange formation of glass in the sand. It looks vaguely like a hand.

"What is this?" Caroline asks. "What is this?"

"It's the finger of God," Jimmy replies in a solemn voice.

In answer to Jimmy's words, the whole sky starts murmuring. Caroline gazes up, straining her ears. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Jimmy doing the same.

"You can hear it too?" she asks, full of wonder. He nods.

She grips his hand more tightly and looks up again, listening hard.

The next day, she hears that half the cattle on the farms outside town perished during the night. And the Novak family died in a fire. _Lightning_, _tragic accident_, is what the grown-ups say. But she and Jimmy both know where the lightning actually struck.

She never sees Jimmy again.

_oo0oo_

When she turns twelve, it's late in July and from one day to the other the temperature drops dramatically. Their neighbors die in a car accident.

"Black ice," her new friend Joe tells her.

Caroline hears the distant humming of wings and whispers and doesn't reply, staring up at the sky for an answer to a question she can't even phrase. Next to her, Joe also goes quiet.

"Can you hear it too?" she asks hopefully.

"No," he says, but he doesn't look at her strangely, and simply continues to stand beside her, waiting in silence. It makes her feel safe and whole.

_I want you to stand next to me always_, Caroline thinks suddenly, and almost senses what that means.

_oo0oo_

When she's thirty, there's stunningly beautiful pictures of a heavy meteor shower plastered over every TV in the country. Something about the images resonates deep inside her.

And then the whirring that's been with her all her life suddenly turns into a voice that she can hear as clear as her husband's, a voice that sounds perhaps even more familiar than her mother's. It's an angel speaking to her. The angel says her name is Hannah.

Caroline realizes that all her life has been leading up to this moment, and she's been waiting for it. She doesn't even hesitate for a second.

_oo0oo_

Three months later, Caroline's pretty disillusioned and ready to give herself the medal for the worst life decisions ever.

When she invited Hannah inside, Caroline didn't know what it would be like, sharing her body with an angel. It's not even sharing, really – shrinking away into a quiet corner of her mind and giving up everything to the selfish newcomer is more like it.

She didn't know that she would have to leave behind all her family and friends, above all Joe.

She didn't know that she would never eat again, never shower again and be stuck in the same stupid pair of jeans forever.

She didn't know that she would never hurt again.

She didn't know that temperature fluctuations, and thunder storms, and strikes of lightning, and cattle deaths were more than random spectacles of nature.

She didn't know that there were angels everywhere, walking among humans, smiting each other.

She didn't know that there were monsters hiding in the dark.

She didn't know that there was evil.

She wants to talk to Hannah, ask her questions, but Hannah can't seem to hear her.

Hannah doesn't talk to anyone else either. She spends a lot of time gazing up at the stars. She used to be up there somewhere, before she fell and took over Caroline's life. Probably, Hannah feels lonely and homesick too.

_oo0oo_

Caroline misses brushing her teeth.

She misses the soft trickle of water over her skin.

Eventually, she even misses having to shave. And menstrual cramps.

She misses Joe.

_oo0oo_

One day, Hannah follows a low humming sound. She seems as perplexed and fascinated as Caroline was back when she was the only one who could hear the faint whirring of wings. Caroline sincerely wishes that she'd never listened to it.

They end up in a dark and dirty factory. There's a strange symbol on the wall, glowing. It's calling out to the angels. There's many of them there, not just Hannah.

And then there's another angel, a man with a haunted face, and he slaughters them all, all but Hannah. She merely gets a strong beating, so strong that Hannah herself can no longer heal her wounds.

They lie there together in the darkness of the factory, bleeding, hurting.

Caroline relishes the sharp pain. She feels more like herself than she has in a long time.

She wonders if Hannah and she will die here eventually. If Joe will find out that Hannah was one of a dozen victims in an unsolvable mass murder. She regrets that he'll never know the truth. She regrets that she never even said goodbye.

She tries talking to Hannah again, because being lonely together seems slightly less frightening, but Hannah remains silent.

When Caroline has all but despaired, another angel appears in the dark factory, puts his hands on Hannah and heals her.

Caroline feels all pain drain out of her, replaced by a soft glow which grows more radiant the longer Hannah looks at the other angel.

His name is Castiel. His baby blue eyes remind her of Jimmy.

_oo0oo_

Together with Castiel, Hannah starts working on bringing down an angel named Metatron who, as far as Caroline can tell, is as evil as you'd expect the devil to be and expelled all the angels from heaven. It seems like a good plan to Caroline. Maybe when the angels return to heaven she'll be able to return to her old life.

Near Castiel she finds herself thinking more and more of Joe. Maybe it's because he spends a lot of time talking about two people called Sam and Dean Winchester. The way that Caroline can feel something twinge inside Hannah every time those names fall from his lips, she realizes that they're not angels, but actual people. Apparently, Castiel has been around humans longer than Hannah, and he's managed to connect with them.

The faint echoes of humanity inside him make Caroline feel slightly less afraid.

Caroline wishes Hannah would follow his lead.

_Just talk to me_, she says to Hannah, quietly. _Please_.

But Hannah ignores her.

_oo0oo_

Beating Metatron isn't as easy as Caroline had hoped. There are angel suicide bombers out there now, which, depressingly enough, is the most religious and righteous the usually bureaucratic angels can get from what she's seen.

Caroline's glad that at least Hannah isn't one of them. She doubts more and more that she'll make it out of this alive, but between the devil and the deep blue sea, she'd rather have Joe think that she was killed by a crazy psychopathic mass murderer than that she turned into a religious fanatic claiming dozens of innocent lives alongside her own.

She thinks of the poor people the angels possessed when they killed themselves, and of their families. None of them signed up for this, she's sure of it.

Thanks to the suicide bombers, Caroline gets to meet the famous Winchester couple for the first time. _Typical_, she thinks, _the handsome ones are always gay_.

Castiel seems particularly taken with the one with the shorter hair and the bad temper, Dean. Caroline sees it in the way his eyes linger, in his sweet little smiles, so out of place in the high-tech angel CSI center. Hannah clearly sees it too. Her distrust and dislike are palpable.

_Don't worry_, Caroline wants to tell Hannah, _Dean's married. Castiel doesn't stand a chance with him_.

Then she overhears someone say that Sam and Dean are brothers. Maybe Hannah's right to be jealous after all.

_oo0oo_

Soon enough, they've got bigger things to worry about than if Castiel prefers Dean Winchester to Hannah or not.

Apparently, Castiel isn't the good guy Caroline and Hannah thought he was, no matter what his baby blue eyes might say. He stole another angel's grace, whatever that may mean, and he instigated those suicide bombings. Or so that sleazy angel named Metatron says.

Hannah demands that he prove Metatron a liar by killing Dean - who's made himself an easy target thanks to his anger management issues. Not that Hannah needed much of an incentive to off Dean in the first place.

_You jealous bitch_, Caroline yells at Hannah, _what's that supposed to prove? That makes no sense! Stop it!_

More quietly, she adds, _You're an angel._ _I thought you were good. I thought I was serving a good cause. I trusted you._

Thankfully, Castiel has a little more sense than the other angels, or maybe he's just got a desperate crush on Dean, but either way he refuses to kill him, and all the other angels leave to join Metatron instead, Hannah among them.

_Wait, don't go_, Caroline says. _Please, Hannah_. She felt slightly less lonely and forlorn with Castiel and the Winchesters nearby.

But Hannah doesn't listen and doesn't look back.

_oo0oo_

Against all odds Castiel and the Winchesters manage to defeat Metatron and Caroline is still alive to witness it. However, no matter what she'd hoped, she's still not able to return to Joe.

A couple of angels prefer life on earth to returning to heaven. Judging from what she's seen of angels in the past year, Caroline can't say that she's surprised. But Hannah won't tolerate it and insists on dragging them back by force. So she won't let Caroline go either.

At least they're now back together with Castiel. He still has the same baby blue eyes and the same stupid car. Since he seems to understand earth and humans better than the other angels, Caroline rather expected that he would convince Hannah to go back to heaven and let the other angels be, but instead he instantly adopts her mission and makes it his own, like a confused puppy who's picked up a new trick.

It's weird.

At least Hannah believes that she's doing the right thing. Castiel doesn't seem to believe in anything anymore. And that doesn't stop him from wreaking havoc on other people's lives, killing more angels and the bodies they inhabit.

_Men_, Caroline thinks a little contemptuously, only to add hastily, _Joe was never like that_.

Not that Hannah's listening anyhow.

_oo0oo_

During their roadtrip Castiel starts explaining emotions to Hannah, and while Hannah looks back at him with clueless, skeptical eyes, Caroline can tell that she's a fast learner, a model student even.

The warm glow that always rose inside her whenever Castiel was near grows steadily stronger. In its wake follow hunger, passion, grief. Caroline can't see the lingering looks and soft smiles Hannah gives Castiel, but she knows they're there, and soon he finds it impossible to ignore them.

"No detours of any kind… This mission, it's everything… We need total focus," Castiel tells Hannah as delicately as he can, and Caroline finds it more than a little insulting all the same.

"Like a laser," Hannah returns curtly and Caroline thinks that maybe she's actually already become better at this whole human communication thing than Castiel.

_I'm proud of you, Hannah_, she tells her. _Don't let him get you down_.

Hannah doesn't say anything back, but the clench of disappointment and wistfulness inside her eases a little, and for the first time Caroline gets the feeling that Hannah might be listening to her after all.

_oo0oo_

Just as Caroline begins to feel that she and Hannah might actually bond over loneliness and longing, she suddenly finds herself face to face with Joe. She feared that she would never see him again, but now he's here and she can't speak to him and that's even worse. She wants to hug him, to kiss him, to explain, to apologize, to cry, but Hannah doesn't do any of these things. Instead, she seems to think that the best way of getting rid of Joe is to make him believe that she – _Caroline_ – is together with Castiel now.

_No! Don't!_ she cries out when Hannah takes hold of Castiel's hand and kisses him. _Don't! That's not me! Joe! That's not me!_

Simultaneously, Joe says, "You're not that kind of person." Caroline feels weak with relief.

However, her relief is short-lived, because Hannah sweeps out of the room and leaves Joe standing there, his eyes angry and wet and questioning and endlessly sad. She can't leave him there, like that, she can't, so Caroline screams herself hoarse.

This time Hannah definitely hears her. An overwhelming surge of guilt and shame floods every single one of her limbs, the current picking up speed the longer she cries.

"So why does it feel so bad?" Hannah asks Castiel.

_Why do you think?_ Caroline yells at her. _Because it's bad. Go back! Go back right this instant! I have to get back to Joe! I need to speak to Joe!_

Castiel, predictably, feels infinitely less troubled by what Hannah did. "You hurt him, but you gave him a reason, something he could use to move forward and make sense of his loss." _Men_, Caroline thinks again, full of bitterness. What Castiel says next makes her stop short, though. "Jimmy Novak."

Is the person Castiel's possessing really Jimmy, her Jimmy? That would explain the baby blue eyes. He had a wife and a daughter, and he lost them. Is he still remotely himself, trapped so long somewhere inside that body? Is he even still alive?

Castiel doesn't answer her questions. "It was difficult, but necessary," is all he says.

Caroline starts screaming again. She doesn't stop until she hears Hannah declare, "I'm sorry, Castiel, I'm not going with you. I'm done."

_I'm sorry_, Hannah then addresses her directly, and before Caroline gets the chance to reply, she's gone. Caroline collapses against Castiel's chest.

She feels hungry and thirsty, and her legs ache from being stuck in a car all day.

It's the best she's felt in over a year.

Briefly, she considers asking Castiel about Jimmy, but then she doesn't. Probably, she doesn't really want to know.

_oo0oo_

When she's finally standing outside the door of their – _her_ home, Caroline no longer knows what to say. She's been quiet for too long. She doesn't even know how to begin.

_There are angels_. _They're not what you'd think – most of them are about as righteous as your average stock gambler on Wall Street._

_Do you remember the boy I told you about, Jimmy? _

In the end, it doesn't matter. Joe takes her into his arms and she doesn't have to say anything.

At the back of her head, she can still hear Hannah's voice, hardly more than the humming of a bee. _Thank you_, she thinks, _and good luck_. She turns away from the sound and towards her husband.


End file.
